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The Last Days of Weimar America

A little over two years ago, I wrote a series of articles predicting the American liberal establishment’s response to fascism, and discussing why I knew it would fail. In particular I said the Biden Administration would seek to isolate the fascist problem to Trump himself, and perhaps a handful of his minions. I also predicted that Democrats would align themselves with “moderate” members of an openly fascist Republican Party, and that the Justice Department would fail to prosecute any powerful coup plotters. Finally, I said the January 6th Committee would accomplish nothing, because the entire battle strategy here was to enumerate Trump’s crimes and then scream “now go vote in rigged elections” at atomized voters. Without decisive action by Garland, most folks would go back to sleep and ignore a fascist insurrection they never wanted to think about in the first place.

Today, in the full light of history, we know that Trump, dozens of his inner circle, more than a hundred members of his political party, multiple lawyers, the secret service, local police leadership, neo-nazi groups, and violent fascist street gangs were coordinating together to overthrow the rightful government on January 6th. As we head into midterm elections between neoliberal muppets and a fascist party that has vowed not to honor them if they lose, recent polling suggests only a tiny percent of Americans think the investigation into a literal coup attempt even matters.

Can anyone even tell me what the “center” establishment’s plan is here? Would they like us to vote harder? The vote is rigged for capital and the reactionaries are currently arguing before a six to three fascist high Supreme Court that elections are Calvinball and States can conduct them any way they please; including disregarding the vote entirely. Should we take to the streets? Something tells me the folks screaming “fund the police” while building out a police state wouldn’t support that kind of action – and they sure as heck won’t be on the barricades with us.

Plainly, neoliberal antifascism, whatever that meant in the first place, has clearly and utterly failed; given what I’ve said above, whose fault is that?

Real Talk About Genocide and Fascism

Look folks, I’m sick, frustrated, and rapidly losing patience with the “Good Germans” around me. So I’m going to break the fourth wall to talk about my motivations, and what I hope we’re doing here on my Instagram.

First of all, I am not a hip cynic, an accelerationist, or a doom-speaker; nor would I advise you invest your energy in listening to those people right now – especially since most of them are currently telling you to join the fascists who’re helping billionaires murder us all. Given that we are atomozined, disempowered commodities in a neofeudalist nightmare that merely starts at “the rise of fascism” before crashing into “the literal end of the world,” it’s fair to say we do not have time for nihilism.

The stark reality is that we are all victims of an ongoing capitalist plot that ultimately ends in sacrificing much of the species to maintain an objectively unsustainable lifestyle and worldview for a tiny fraction of wealthy power brokers. Furthermore, I think it’s very clear that the political vehicle the ruling classes have chosen to accomplish this goal, is open fascism throughout the broader Pig Empire. This isn’t a conspiracy theory, this is simply an objective analysis of how our current political system is functioning, how our leaders have promised to address the climate crisis, and what the ruling billionaire classes are investing money in here on the brink of climate collapse.

Unfortunately, most people in our society really don’t want to believe this obvious reality. They are content to ignore this horrible noise and let a public sector wholly owned by the same rich men who mean to kill us all, lead us towards doom. This in turn means that no matter how much I, or some of my readers might like to focus on solutions, we simply aren’t there yet as a society; and yes, I’m aware we’re running out of time to accept reality, which is why my warnings have become so frantic.

There are ways we can fight back; but I can’t share them with you here on billionaire-controlled social media, and there’s little point in going to jail to warn a society of ostrich people still firmly committed to head in the sand support for capitalist rule. Yet.

nina illingworth

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Nina-Bytes: At Your Service

The Jan. 6 Committee Gave Us Some Bad News About the Secret Service

I really don’t think it’s a secret at this point that I don’t have a lot of faith in liberal antifascism, or a January 6th Committee that promised in advance they weren’t going to recommend charging any powerful fascists for conducting a failed autogolpe. Long before President Biden went on stage to call the MAGA movement “quasi-fascist,” the largely useless ruling liberal establishment was signaling that their plan was to use the commission to lay out the coup plotter’s crimes, and then pass the ball back to voters without taking significant action to stop a still ongoing fascist insurrection at all. Needless to say, I think this is a pretty terrible plan.

As such I haven’t spent a whole lot of time writing about the findings of the January 6th Committee, under the mistaken belief the mainstream liberal media would handle that for me. When I see dozens of mainstream corporate media outlets respond to clear evidence that the Secret Service was involved in the failed coup plot, like it was a threat estimation error however, I feel obligated to push back on that idea. Please keep in mind, all this is despite the fact that we already know the Service hid evidence of a plot to murder Congresswoman Nancy Pelosi, deleted text messages from that day, and openly speculated on the lifespan of then-Vice President Mike Pence while the riots raged outside.

To correct this absurd state of affairs, let’s turn to this October 14th, 2022 article by David Rothkopf in The Daily Beast of all places; starting with a quote that sums up what you should have heard on the evening news:

“The contents of some of those documents were revealed on Thursday. They made it clear that reports of an “intelligence failure” related to Jan. 6 were nonsense. The agency had clear and specific warnings describing an armed attack on the Capitol and threats against members of Congress as part of plan to block the certification of votes. And nonetheless, they let the president’s speech go on. And they did not do much to prevent the attacks from happening. While some in the agency reported on the escalating dangers during the day of Jan. 6, others clearly chose to let events transpire. They were even planning to bring Trump to the Hill until shortly after the Capitol barricades were breached. Rather than presiding over an intelligence failure, they had actually actively enabled the insurrection to take place, with some among their ranks content to look the other way and ignore established protocols.”

Wow; I’d pay real cash money to hear even one single politician on my TV talking like David does here, instead of milquetoast admonishments about the dangers of “semi-fascism” – and I’m not alone on that one, I assure you. Thankfully for those of us who’re tired of feeling like we’re taking crazy pills while Weimar America implodes around us however, Rothkopf doesn’t stop there. He also clearly articulates the mainstream, legalist nature of the fascist threat, and the growing sense of doubt that Merrick Garland’s Department of Justice is up to the challenge of taking it on:

“The real culmination of the inquiry must be left to the Sphinx-like Department of Justice, whose silence might reveal its commitment to the secrecy that should surround an historically significant investigation. Or that silence might be followed by inaction. We just cannot know at this point, even though the Jan. 6 committee’s revelations made it clear that inaction in the face of the evidence that exists would be one of the greatest miscarriages of justice in U.S. history and would set a dangerous precedent, leaving our entire system at risk.

But there were other disturbing threads that emerged from the congressional inquiry that themselves appeared to require their own independent inquiry. Several of these concern the seeming existence of what might be called the “dark state.” This is not the conspiracy theory fantasy spun by the far right about a “deep state” permanent government that was foiling the will of the people: That was always such a stalking horse, a concept that would enable MAGA officials to root out public servants who placed fealty to the Constitution ahead of loyalty to a political party. Rather it was a real loose alliance among Trump allies in the government who were willing to set aside the rule of law in the service of Trump himself.

At the core of this movement were officials within key government agencies—including the Department of Homeland Security and within it the Secret Service, the FBI, the Department of Defense, the Department of Justice and the intelligence community—who had been placed in positions of responsibility because they could be counted upon to bend the rules for Trump.”

Quite frankly folks, I don’t really have a whole lot else to add here. This isn’t an “I told you so” moment, although quite frankly I did. The fact of the matter is the Capital Hill riot was a coup attempt, conducted and then justified by then-President Trump as well as numerous mainstream figures in American “semi-fascist” politics with very real positions of power. If after months of the January 6th Committee “making the argument” literally nobody in the voting public seems to really give a damn anymore, maybe it’s time to ask whether or not our wise liberal leaders and the corporate muppets that pass for our media might bear some responsibility for that reality.

Nina-Bytes: Rigging America In The Open

Inside Steve Bannon’s ‘disturbing’ quest to radically rewrite the US constitution

Recently on Twitter, I devoted a few pithy words to mentioning that fascists in American society were “tapping every possible route to power that they can and hoping one hits.” I know this because I’ve been writing about these efforts to override what passes for our “liberal democracy” for several years now; whether they occur by legalist means, or through highly illegal acts of terror and politicized violence. Given this, I think that it’s probably saying something when I note that this October 19th, 2022 article by Ed Pilkington over in The Guardian made my blood run cold.

While I strongly advise you to read the entire article, “the too long didn’t read” here is that noted fascist strategist Steve Bannon is using his trash fire podcast to push a highly-plausible right wing conspiracy to re-write the constitution pretty much any way they please. The tactic involves using a thirty-four state conservative majority, to hold a Constitutional Convention. Given that this is a fascist movement that is currently denying the results of the last Presidential election, attempting to rig elections going forward, and organizing a pogrom against trans people, all out in the open, that prospect should be quite concerning to you. As the piece itself makes clear:

“Mark Meckler, a founder of the Tea Party who now leads one of the largest groups advocating for the tactic, the Convention of States Action (Cosa), spelled out some of the prime objectives on Bannon’s show. “We need to say constitutionally, ‘No, the federal government cannot be involved in education, or healthcare, or energy, or the environment’,” he said.

Meckler went on to divulge the anti-democratic nature of the state convention movement when he said a main aim was to prevent progressive policies being advanced through presidential elections. “The problem is, any time the administration swings back to Democrat – or radical progressive, or Marxist which is what they are – we are going to lose the gains. So you do the structural fix.”

The “structural fix” involves Republican state legislatures pushing conservative amendments to America’s foundational document. By cementing the policies into the US constitution, they would become largely immune to electoral challenge.”

So how plausible is this really? Well this is where things get terrifying because we’re talking about an extremely well-funded project with support across the broader mainstream right; this isn’t one of Bannon’s fascist fantasies, this project is on the wish list of powerful lobby groups and billionaires like the Mercer family and groups run by Leonard Leo. Furthermore, and as this article makes clear – these guys are making progress:

“Under Article V, 34 states would have to call for a constitutional convention to reach the two-thirds requirement. Cosa has so far succeeded in getting 19 states to sign up, with a further six in active consideration.

ALEC, which sets a narrower remit for a convention focused on its balanced budget amendment, has gone further with 28 states on board.

Either way, there is a shortfall. To address it, constitutional convention leaders have invented increasingly exotic mathematical formulas for attaining the magic number, 34.”

Please keep in mind that due to aggressive gerrymandering and a concerted effort to control state legislatures by the Republican Party, the GOP currently controls thirty-one states and only needs thirty-four; even if not all of those state legislatures are currently on board with this plan, there’s nothing to suggest that will remain true as the GOP continues to slide further into open fascist politics. Once that happens, all bets are off; and that’s even setting aside the fact that a GOP Congress could simply decide to fudge the numbers.

All of which leaves only one obvious question; is it still “ridiculous” to call political movement actively working to eliminate democratic rights and permanently lock the destruction of all life on Earth into the constitution on behalf of fossil fuel capital, fascist? Asking for about seven billion friends who aren’t part of the capitalist ruling class.